
ass 



PRESE.N i; n I 



I 



Jewish Theological Seminary 
of America 



k 7 



2Pbra|)am Lincoln 



By 

S. Schechter 



3Pbrajmm lintoln 



Memorial Address delivered at the Lincoln 

Centennial Celebration of the Jewish 

Theological Seminary of America 

By 

S. SCHECHTER 

President 




NEW YORK 

1909 



L 



.5 



44ft€etoteflt 



09 



Abraham Lincoln 



ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS, in his characteri- 
zation of Lincoln, says, "The Union with him in 
sentiment rose to the sublimity of a religious 
mysticism ; whilst his ideas of its structure and 
formation in logic rested upon nothing but the subtleties 
of a sophism." 

Stephens was, by agreement of all, the ablest historian 
of the Confederacy, and, some think, its greatest man; Lincoln 

and those who read his argument for the Union contained ant * 

in his address given at Milledgeville, Georgia, before the Stephens 

War between the States began, will further admit that he 
had the gift of seeing below the surface of things, for the 
condition of affairs as seen then by superficial observers 
was all in favor of secession. Stephens was also one of 
the few prominent men of the Thirtieth Congress for 
whom Lincoln conceived great admiration during his first 
appearance at Washington in the capacity of a member 
of the House of Representatives. Lincoln was present 
when Stephens delivered "the best speech of an hour's 
length" he had ever heard, which moved him so deeply 
that his "old, withered eyes were full of tears." At a 
later date, again, when Lincoln stood before the coun- 
try as the President-elect, Stephens was, perhaps, the 
only Southern statesman whose opinion Lincoln so- 
licited in reference to the coming struggle. Some his- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Various 
Aspects 
of 
Lincoln 



torians maintain that Lincoln seriously considered the 
advisability of inviting Stephens to become a member 
of his cabinet. A characterization of Lincoln coming 
from such a source is worthy of our attention. It will, 
therefore, not be amiss if we devote this hour to this 
trait of religious mysticism in his character, touching 
also on one or two other traits which, by their seeming 
contrast, served either as a corrective or as an emphasis 
of this mystical trait. 

Whether this aspect has ever been the subject of special 
treatment by any other writer, I am unable to say. The list 
of Lincolniana prepared by the Library of Congress and 
consisting mostly of writings relating to Lincoln, covers 
a large quarto volume of eighty-six pages. This list was 
published in 1906, and we may assume that the last two 
years has brought us a new harvest of Lincolniana. There 
you will find Lincoln as a lawyer, Lincoln as an organizer, 
Lincoln as an orator, Lincoln as a general, Lincoln as a 
debater, Lincoln as a master of men, Lincoln as a finan- 
cier, and ever so many more Lincolns. For all I know, 
or rather do not know, the possibility is not excluded that 
in this enormous mass of literature, Lincoln may have 
also been treated from the point of view I intend to ap- 
proach him this evening. Even in this case, it may per- 
haps not be entirely uninteresting to listen to one whose 
first acquaintance with Lincoln was made in far-distant 
Roumania through the medium of Hebrew newspapers 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



some forty-five years ago. There Lincoln was described 
as originally a wood-chopper (prose for "rail-splitter"), 
which fired the imagination of the boy to recog- 
nize in the President of the United States, a new Hillel, 
for legend described the latter as having been engaged in 
the same occupation before he was called by the people 
to the dignity of Patriarch, or President of the San- 
hedrim Years have come and years have gone, and the 
imagination of the boy was in many respects corrected by 
the reading of serious books bearing on the history of the 
United States, and particularly on that of the Civil War. 
But this in no way diminished his admiration for his hero, 
Abraham Lincoln, whom he was always studying, from 
the viewpoint of the student of Jewish literature ; a liter- 
ature which, in spite of its eastern origin, affords so much 
in the way of parallel and simile to the elucidation of 
many a feature in the story of the great Western of 
Westerns. 

The youth of Lincoln offered little or no opportunity 
for the display of religious mysticism. Some historians 
of the high and dry kind take, as it seems, a regular pleas- 
ure in speaking of the surroundings that were about Lin- 
coln as "coarse, ignorant and poverty-stricken." In a cer- 
tain measure this is true. Lincoln himself described the 
part of Indiana in which he grew up as a "wild region, 
with many bears and other animals still in the woods." 
The conditions were thus semi-barbaric, and may be held 



Lincoln 

and 

Hillel 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

responsible for whatever of coarseness and uncouthness 
respectability detected in the life of Lincoln. Barbaric 
conditions, however, have the great redeeming virtue that 
there is little room in them for vulgarity, and this com- 
pensates for the lack of many an accomplishment of 
civilization. By "vulgarity," I mean that vice of civili- 
zation which makes man ashamed of himself and his 
Early next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else. It is 

Surround- a kind of social hypocrisy, and not less pernicious to 

j s the development of character than religious hypocrisy 

to the development of saintliness. With Lincoln in par- 
ticular, such simulation to which we are broken in, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, in a great civilized commu- 
nity, would have proven fatal, as his great strength lay 
in the fact that he always remained himself, or, as one 
of his eulogists aptly said: "Lincoln is not a type. He 
stands alone — no ancestors, no fellows, no successors." 

More serious perhaps is the charge of ignorance. In 
the biography for the Directory of Congress, Lincoln 
gave himself the mark, "education defective." Learned 
institutions of any kind were almost unkown in 
those regions. "If a straggler supposed to understand 
Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was 
looked upon as a wizard." But even books, which have 
wrought so many miracles in paving the way for many a 
self-taught man, leading to the highest academic honors, 
were scarce. The whole settlement in which Lincoln 



Early 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 7 

spent the greatest part of his early youth, could hardly 
have commanded such a library as any youngster in 
our days, even among the poorer classes, might look 
upon as his property on the day of his confirmation. 
Even the itinerant ministers of religion who would 
occasionally visit these pioneer settlements were less 
distinguished for their sources of information than for Keadmg 

their forcible language, well spiced with brimstone and 
other nether-world ingredients. But, as has already been 
pointed out by several biographers of Lincoln, there 
is no cause to remonstrate with Providence on this 
account. For the few books which Lincoln might re- 
gard as his own, so that he could pore over them 
day and night, were of the best kind, being the Bible, 
Aesop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, the Pilgrim's Progress 
and Weems' "Life of Washington." All these works left 
a permanent impression upon him, which is traceable in 
the simplicity of his lucid style, and in his love of fable 
and parable as a means of illustrating a point. Shake- 
speare and a few other English poets with whom he made 
acquaintance at a somewhat later date, may be added to 
this list. Perhaps it would have been better for Lincoln's 
reputation if Lincoln's youth, which brought him to Illi- 
nois, where he came in contact with a more advanced 
civilization, would in respect of book learning, have not 
gone much further beyond the books or kind of books 
just mentioned — in addition, of course, to such works on 



8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the history and the Constitution of the United States, as 
were necessary for his mental equipment in his future 
Tendencies career as lawyer and statesman. For those were the days 
of the in which Volney's "Ruins" and Tom Paine's "Age of 

Age Reason" were taken as seriously and read with as 

much eagerness as a certain class of books dabbling in 
evolution and the survival of the fittest — pulpit evolu- 
tion, we might term it — are read and discussed to-day. 
Lincoln in his zeal for knowledge did not escape the 
tendency of his age, and in impulsive moments gave ex- 
pression to certain rationalistic views which were after- 
wards seized upon with much avidity by friend and foe 
as representing "the true Lincoln." The student of He- 
brew literature, when reading such "Lincolns," emphasiz- 
ing the shortcomings of his youth and the lack of present- 
able ancestry, involuntarily thinks of the ancient Rabbinic 
but truly democratic principle: "They appoint not a 
leader over the community unless there hangs a mass 
of reptiles (in the shape of certain blemishes) behind 
him, lest he become overbearing." Some writers appar- 
ently mistake the reptiles for an essential part of the 
man. 

Lincoln outgrew all his puerile rationalistic perform- 
ances soon enough when the time for such action came as 
could never have been accomplished without faith, in all 
its sublimity. This action was the saving of the Union, 
which was at the same time the great opportunity of his 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



life, and unfortunately also the occasion of his death. No 
religious hero ever entered upon his mission to conquer 
the world for an idea or creed with more reverence and 
a deeper feeling of the need of divine assistance than did 
Lincoln, when he was about to leave his home and his 
old associates and associations, good and evil, for his new 
home and his new life in Washington. "I now leave," he 
said in his farewell address to his fellow citizens at 
Springfield, 111., "not knowing when or whether I may 
return, with a task before me greater than that which 
rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. 
With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him 
who can go with me, and remain with you, and be every- 
where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet 
be well." This sounds like a prayer ; but the concluding 
lines of his Inaugural, given in Washington on the 4th 
of March, 1861, rise to the heights of a mystical hymn. 

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be 
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not 
break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of mem- 
ory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of 
our nature." 

"Higher criticism" attributes these lines to a sugges- 



Farewell 

to 

Springfield 



10 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Higher 
Criticism 
of 
Lincoln 



Mystic 
Ideal of 
Union 



tion of Seward, but it was Lincoln, as admitted even by 
the "higher critics," who gave them life and spirit and 
who transformed them into an illustration of perfect and 
tender beauty." 

The expression, "mystic chords of memory," is sig- 
nificant. Napoleon the Great is recorded to have once 
made the apt remark, "Religion means memory." If the 
Union was to be saved, it had to be raised to the dignity 
of a religion, which means memory, an object hallowed by 
past associations, which alone holds out promises for the 
future. Notwithstanding all realistic conceptions of his- 
tory, the "better angels of our nature," that alone termi- 
nate great issues by their readiness for sacrifice, will 
never enlist in a cause purely material. The better 
angels as a rule fought for the shrine of their gods; 
for the expansion of a religious idea of which they 
were possessed; for their existence as a nation — that is, 
their institutions, their language, their literature, their 
traditional customs and usages ; for glory and honor — in 
brief, for their memories ; though gold and other material 
gains always proved a valuable auxiliary as attracting the 
minor angels. In the case of America, the Western man 
might struggle for an outlet to the Gulf, the Eastern man 
might contend for the protection of infant industries, but 
to engage in a war of such dimensions as the Civil War 
was, with its loss of men and loss of treasure, the dynamis 
of an idea and ideal was indispensable. And this idea, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN n 

defined by the word "Union," was to all intents and pur- 
poses a mystical one, as every religious idea is. The 
State, reaching directly into the life of the citizen through 
the means of its courts, its schools and its powers of di- 
rect taxation, became something concrete and tangible, 
evident to the dullest intellect in its distribution of re- 
ward and punishment, and realized as the tutelar deity 
of the community. On the other hand, the benefits of the 
Central Government were, as Stephens rightly pointed 
out, so silent and unseen, that they were seldom thought 
of or appreciated, just as is the oxygen in the air we 
breathe little thought of or appreciated, although it is the 
very element that gives us life and strength. Hence, the 
Union was a mere abstraction, invisible, a hypostasis of 
memory and hope, and appealing only to our sense of 
reverence and worship or "the better angels of our 
ture." 

The realization of great ideas, heaven-conceived and j^e Bjrtjj 

earth-born, is not accomplished without travail and woe, Q f t j ie 

deep sorrow and repeated disappointment. History of Union 

things past, and apocalyptic pictures of events to come, 
furnish sufficient proof of this. And such was the case 
with the idea of the Union before it could pass into the 
consciousness of the people as a solemn fact. The effect 
of the first Union defeats upon the great persons of 
Washington and their entourage is recorded by Walt 
Whitman as "a mixture of awful consternation, uncer- 



12 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



The Niagara 
Simile 



tainty, rage, shame, helplessness and stupefying disap- 
pointment." Lincoln himself was no exception in this 
respect, though his calm disposition preserved him from 
"rage." His sublime faith, again, in the cause of the 
Union which, in the manner of a Luther at the Diet of 
Worms, he considered to be God's cause, made real des- 
pair impossible. But this confidence did not exclude mo- 
ments of terrible anguish and intense suffering. At times 
of frightful suspense, he would envy the common soldier, 
and would willingly have exchanged places with him, 
whilst after the terrible defeat of the Union forces at 
Fredericksburg, he exclaimed: "Oh, if there is a man 
out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him !" His 
normal condition may be described as expectation in- 
spired by the sense of the awful. It is well depicted in 
the answer given by him to a delegation of ministers im- 
portuning him with their well-meant counsel; and prob- 
ably reflects his own mental attitude: "Gentlemen," he 
said, "suppose all the property you possess were in gold, 
and you had placed it in the hands of Blondin to carry 
across the Niagara River on a rope. With slow, cautious, 
steady steps he walks the rope, bearing your all. Would 
you shake the cable and keep shouting to him, 'Blondin, 
stand up a little straighter ! Blondin, stoop a little more ; 
go a little faster; lean more to the south! Now lean a 
little more to north!' Would that be your behaviour in 
such an emergency? No, you would hold your breath, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



13 



everyone of you, as well as your tongues. You would 
keep your hands off until he was safe on the other side." 
This simile is rather homely in its local color, but it 
struck me as peculiarly forcible many years ago, long be- 
fore I had ever seen the Niagara Falls or ever heard of 
Blondin and his performances. It somehow sounded to 
me like an echo from the following passage to be found in 
Bedresi's "Examination of the World," that may be para- 
phrased thus : "The World is a stormy sea, of depth im- 
measurable and expanse unbounded. Time is a frail 
bridge built over it. The one end is fastened by cords to 
the vast that precedes existence, and its terminus gives 
glimpses of eternal glory through the light of the pres- 
ence of the King. The width of the bridge is as a man's 
cubit, and the guards have disappeared. But thou, Son of 
Man, without thy consent, thou livest and continuously 
dost progress over it from the day of thy birth. When 
thou meditatest upon the narrowness of the span, having 
no side path either to the right or to the left, when thou 
perceivest death and destruction encompassing thee as a 
wall on either side, will not thy heart fail, and wilt thou 
still glory in power and fame?" Bedresi flourished in the 
thirteenth century, and his book was written in Hebrew, 
and I hardly need say that Lincoln never as much as even 
heard of it. 

With the consciousness of the Union, or the body-pol- 
itic, there developed in Lincoln also the consciousness of 



14 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



the national sin, and the need of confession, which indeed 
is another manifestation of religious mysticism, Renan, in 
his famous review of Amiel's "Journal," remarks: "He 
(Amiel) speaks of sin, of salvation, etc., as though they 
were realities. Sin in particular, engrosses his attention 
and saddens him." Sin was also a reality with Lincoln, 
weighing heavily on his conscience, not to be counte- 
nanced on any aesthetic considerations or argued away by 
any philosophic or sociological formula. There it was, 
and it cried for atonement. Thus, in one of his proclama- 
tions, he addresses the nation in the following words: 
"We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no 
other nation has ever grown ; but we have forgotten God. 
Conscious- .... We have been the recipients of the choicest 

ness of bounties of heaven. Intoxicated by unbroken success, we 

Sin have become . . . too proud to pray to the God that 

made us. We have been preserved these many years in 
peace and prosperity. It behooves us, then, .... to 
confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and 
forgiveness." The plural "we" in these proclamations is 
to be taken literally to include the North, whom he by no 
means acquitted of the great national sin. "If God wills," 
he wrote once, "the removal of a great wrong, and wills 
also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, 
shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impar- 
tial history will find therein new cause to attest and re- 
vere the justice and goodness of God." And in the nation 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 15 

he included fully his own person. He is even said to have 
exclaimed once in a moment of deep depression, "If our 
American society and the United States Government are 
demoralized and overthrown, it will come from the vora- 
cious desire for office, this wriggle to live without toil, 
work and labor, from which I am not free myself." 

The greatest human and at the same time religious doc- 
ument, however, left us by Lincoln, for which history 
hardly affords any model, except perhaps that of the 
Scriptures is, as is well known, his Second Inaugural: 
" 'The Almighty has His own purpose. Woe unto the 
world because of offenses; for it must needs be that of- 
fenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense 
cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is 
one of those offenses which, in the providence of God 
must needs come, but which, having continued through 
his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he 
gives to both North and South this terrible war as the 
woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we dis- 
cern therein any departure from the divine attributes 
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Hope and 

Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this Prayer 

mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if 
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 



God 
Governing 

the 
World 



l6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
must be said: 'The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether.' " 

When reading the lines just given, one can hardly be- 
lieve that they formed a part of a message addressed in 
the nineteenth century to an assembly composed largely 
of men of affairs and representatives of a special political 
party, surrounded by all the pomp and paraphernalia of 
one of the greatest legislative bodies the world had ever 
seen. One rather imagines himself transported into a 
camp of contrite sinners determined to leave the world 
and its vanities behind them, possessed of no other 
thought but that of reconciliation with their God, and ad- 
dressed by their leader when about to set out on a course 
of penance. Indeed, how little the religious sentiments 
manifest in this document echoed those of either party is 
evident from a letter of Lincoln to Thurlow Weed with 
reference to the Second Inaugural: " . . • • belie ^ e 
it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by 
being shown that there has been a difference of purpose 
between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, 
in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the 
world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told 
and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most 
directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me 
to tell it " To take upon one's self the burden of humilia- 
tion in which a whole nation should share, is another 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



17 



feature of religious mysticism which realizes in the 
sphere of morality the unity of humanity and in the 
realm of history the union of the nation, so that it does 
not hesitate to suffer and to atone for the sins of the 
generation. 

Religious mysticism, however, has the defects of its 
quality, and the defects are very serious. For, the super- 
abundance of zeal and extravagant enthusiasm such as 
often accompany religious mysticism may, as experience 
teaches, very easily degenerate into fanaticism and law- 
lessness, brushing aside all legal restraints and occa- 
sionally ignoring even all humane considerations. From 
these dangers, Lincoln was preserved by his legal train- 
ing and not less by his divine humor. 

Many writers have shown what Lincoln's experience 
at the bar meant for him in his later historic guidance of 
the nation. But the best gift these twenty-three years in 
the legal profession brought him was that it created in 
him a legal conscience, which proved immune against the 
excesses of mysticism. He certainly considered slavery 
as the sin, par excellence. "If slavery is not wrong, 
nothing is wrong," and to this conviction of the wrong of 
slavery, statements may be quoted dating from his earli- 
est manhood. About this fact all the best authorities are 
agreed now, whatever doubts there may have been ex- 
pressed concerning it a generation ago, and there is no 
necessity to adduce here more proofs. But he was equally 



Legalism 

Antidote to 

Mysticism 



i8 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Lawlessness 
the 

Supreme 
Crime 



convinced of the supremacy of the law, as embodied in 
the Constitution, its authorized interpretations, and the 
enactments made under its provisions. Liberty is sacred, 
but so is the Constitution, the sacred writ of the United 
States, and in opposition to the most distinguished of his 
colleagues, he was loath to agree that it can be ruled out of 
court by the "higher law," or the "unwritten law." "Let 
every American," he exclaimed in one of his earlier 
speeches, "every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his 
posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to 
violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and 
never to tolerate their violation by others." Indeed, he 
considers "the increasing disregard of the law which per- 
vaded the country as something of ill omen — the growing 
disposition to substitute the wild and curious passions in 
lieu of the sober judgments of the courts, and the worse 
than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice." 
The passages just quoted are taken from an address given 
by Lincoln in January, 1837, when he was fully engaged 
in his profession as a lawyer. But this conviction of the 
sovereignty of the law, grows upon him with the growth 
of his personality and the growth of the temptation to 
break it. He is "naturally anti-slavery," as he expressed 
it, and is the more on his guard not to follow the bent of 
his nature. And the temptation was great indeed, when 
we consider not only his own inclination, but the general 
tendency of several of the leaders of his own party, to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



19 



think lightly of the Constitution, a tendency expressed in 
Stanton's well-known words: "It is better to have a 
country without a Constitution than a Constitution with- 
out a country. It is further clear from Lincoln's famous 
letter to Hodges that he shared to some degree in this feel- 
ing. Yet he remained steadfast to his legal principles. He 
admitted that there is such a thing as "bad laws," but the 
only remedy he saw was that they "should be repealed as 
soon as possible ; as long as they continue in force, they 
should be religiously observed." Hence his well-known 
hesitation to emancipate the slave, and his recurring to it 
in the end only as a measure of war, which he thought 
justified by the Constitution. 

This legal conscience found a powerful ally in Lincoln's 
humor. No flaw in an argument could elude it, no human 
weakness in either party could escape it, but it possessed 
also that divine quality of wounding and healing at the 
same time, which made it with no real malice to any- 
one and charitable in the end to others. 

Nothing is more congenial to the student of Jewish 
literature than these ingredients in Lincoln's mental 
make-up which found their expression in his stories, his 
repartee, his wit and sarcasm, in all of which he was 
such a consummate master. In this literature, the "ma- 
shal" (comparison) or "maaseh" (story) are the most 
prominent. They were mostly used by way of illustra- 
tion. The use of the "mashal" (or comparison) in par- 



Bad Laws 
Must be 
Changed 



20 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ticular, is illustrated by the Rabbis by another "mashal,"" 
comparing it to the handle which enables people to 
Lincoln's take hold of a thing or subject. Occasionally, it forms 

Wit and the introduction to the most solemn discourse. Thus it is 

Humor recorded of a famous Rabbi that before he commenced his 

lectures on points of law before his disciples, he would 
first tell them something humorous to make them laugh, 
and then, resuming his natural self, commenced in solemn 
frame of mind his discourse. I need hardly remind you 
here of the well-known tradition in connection with the 
President's first reading of the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion to the members of his cabinet (September 22, 1862). 
They met in his office at the White House, and then took 
their seats in the usual order. Lincoln then took Artemus 
Ward's book, and read from it the chapter, "High-Handed 
Outrage at Utica," which he thought very funny, and en- 
joyed the reading of it greatly, while the members of the 
cabinet, except Stanton, laughed with him. Then he fell 
into a grave tone and began the discussion preceding the 
perusal of this great historical and momentous document. 
To give another example: When the Rabbi wanted 
to impress his audience with the evil consequences of 
intemperance, he would say, "Story: Once upon a time 
there was a pious man whose father was addicted to 
strong drink, which brought great shame upon him. On 
one occasion, the pious man walked in the street in a 
pouring rain, when he perceived a drunken man lying in 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



21 



the gutter and exposed to the abuse of the street urchins, 
who made sport of him. He thereupon thought in 
his heart, 'I will induce father to come here to show him 
the humiliation he brings upon himself by his dissipation.' 
The father came, but the first thing he did was to ask the 
drunken man for the address of the inn where such good 
wine was sold." This reminds one strongly of Lincoln's 
well-known answer to the charge brought against one of 
his most successful generals that he sometimes drank too 
much. Lincoln merely asked to know the brand of 
whisky consumed by him so that he "might distribute it 
among some of the other generals." Lincoln's pleading 
with his friends and foes that there is no hope for Amer- 
ica to live outside of the Constitution if they cannot any 
longer live in it (I am unable to locate the passage or to 
give the exact words) reminded me also when I read it 
of the following Jewish parable: "Once upon a time, a 
fox was walking by the banks of a river, and he saw the 
fish swimming from place to place. 'Why this unrest?' 
asked the fox. The fish answered, 'Because of the nets 
spread out for us by the sons of men.' Thereupon, the 
fox said, 'Would you not prefer to move to the land and I 
and you will live together, as my ancestors and yours did 
before us?' The fish answered, 'Art thou the one who is 
spoken of as the sage among the animals? Thou art a 
fool. If, in our element of life we cannot always escape 



Rabbinic 
Story-telling 



Fable 
of the Fish 



22 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Humor 

in 

Controversy 



Less Noise 
More Light 



danger, the less so in the element that means death for 
us.' " 

Lincoln's humor not only served him as a means of in- 
struction and illustration, but proved also an excellent 
weapon of offence and defence. You all probably remem- 
ber the following story which he told once when discuss- 
ing the newspaper attacks on his administration, emanat- 
ing from the various quarters which had little in common 
except their hostility to the President : 

"A traveler on the frontier found himself out of his 
reckoning one night in a most inhospitable region. A 
terrific thunderstorm came up, to add to his trouble. He 
floundered along until at length his horse gave out. The 
lightning afforded him the only clue to his way, but the 
peals of thunder were frightful. One bolt, which seemed 
to crush the earth beneath him, brought him to his knees. 
By no means a praying man, his petition was short and 
to the point: 'O Lord, if it's all the same to you, give us 
a little more light and a little less noise.' " 

The noise indeed was terrific and light was necessary. 
I once read a remark that every great movement is liable 
to suffer not less by the arrogance of the few than by the 
ignorance of the many. The many in this case were the 
people at large who, in their slow and sluggish way, could 
only be moved by the sequence of events under the tuition 
of such a master mind as Lincoln. More hopeless was 
the case of the few who looked upon themselves as the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



23 



elect, and neither minded nor cared for the people 
behind them. These self-constituted advisers did not 
take into consideration that there were such things as a 
Constitution and Constitutional guarantees, which as 
the sworn officer of the law Lincoln could not possibly 
ignore. They were always ready with their counsel to 
Lincoln, and even the logic of events never cured them 
of their dogmatism and positiveness. Only lately, I 
read a book by one of these elect, written more than a 
generation after Lincoln's death, in which the impression 
is conveyed that the Civil War might have been easily 
averted had the President but followed the advice offered 
to him by the writer and his friends. 

"And this reminds me of a story," to use a favorite ex- 
pression of Lincoln. I give the story in the peculiar version 
I heard it once from "one who tells" Milton's (Maggid) 
though the main features of it are known from the Mid- 
rashim and the Pseudepigrapha, not to mention "Para- 
dise Lost." "When the Holy One, blessed be He, 
was about to create man, He invited the angels and asked 
them for their opinion. Their answer was, 'Let man not 
be created, for he will prove a sinful creature.' And so 
indeed it came to pass, 'that the wickedness of man was 
upon the earth.' Then they came to God and said, 'We 
told you so!' The Lord's answer was, 'If you are so 
self-righteous descend to the earth and see whether with 
all your heavenly bringing up you will turn out less proof 



Angelic 
Interference 



2 4 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



against sin than man?' A certain number of angels did 
descend to earth, where they made the acquaintance of 
the daughters of man, 'and brought forth the generation 
of giants, men of renown.' But the great majority of 
the angels withdrew to a remote corner of heaven, 
eternally absorbed in the admiration of their own virtue 
which prevented them from begetting giants and men 
of renown and continuing out of sheer habit to sing the 
praise, not of God, but of themselves." 

The counterpart of this celestial coterie is known 
on earth under various appellatives bestowed upon them 
by themselves, such as "illuminati," "elect," "seekers after 
perfection," etc., and and the only way to meet them is 
with humor in its various aspects. Serious argument is of 
little use on such occasions, for they appeal to the will of 
God, "which prevails," and should be indeed the last ap- 
peal in all matters ; but it never occurs to them that there 
is a possibility that they are not the chosen vessels for this 
revelation of the will of God. As Lincoln expressed it, 
"There is certainly no contending against the will of God, 
but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining and apply- 
ing it to particular cases." How he dealt with the "certain 
ones" may be best illustrated by the following episodes: 

A member of a church, at a reception, closed his re- 
marks with the pious hope "that the Lord is on our side." 
"I am not at all concerned about that," commented the 
President, "for we know that the Lord is always on the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



25 



side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and 
prayer that I and the nation should be on the Lord's side." 
This suspicion against overzeal, which might make it 
possible for man not to be on the Lord's side even when 
in the service of a righteous cause, recalls to my 
mind the following Rabbinic paraphrase of I Kings, 
19: 14, which is not without a touch of humor. "I 
have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, be- 
cause the children of Israel have forsaken thy coven- 
ant." But God says: "It is my covenant, not thy cov- 
enant." The prophet then proceeds, "They have thrown 
down thy altars and slain thy prophets with the sword." 
But God rejoins, "They are my altars and my prophets. 
What does this concern thee?" Thereupon the prophet 
says, "And I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life 
to take it away." Whereupon, the Holy One, blessed be 
He, says, "Thou thinkest of self. Resign thy office as 
prophet." This is indeed the great danger of every mis- 
sion of this nature, that man is very often liable to con- 
fuse his own cause with that of God. I remember to have 
read somewhere a conversation between two American 
statesmen. In the heat of the argument the one quoted 
the well-known dictum of Johnson, "Patriotism is the last 
refuge of a scoundrel." Whereupon, the other retorted, 
"Sir, you overlook the possibilities of reform and 
progress." The history of Reconstruction unfortunately 
showed that the retort was not without a grain of truth. 



Overzeal 
Rebuked 



26 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Lincoln's 
Attitude to 
Advice 



Even more characteristic is Lincoln's answer given to 
a delegation of ministers from Chicago, urging him to 
issue a Proclamation of Emancipation before he consid- 
ered it fit to do so. One of the ministers felt it his duty 
to make a more searching appeal to the President's con- 
science. Just as they were retiring, he turned and said to 
Lincoln: "What you have said to us, Mr. President, 
compels me to say to you in reply that it is a message to 
you from our Divine Master, through me, commanding 
you, sir, to open the doors of bondage, that the slave may 
go free!" Generally, "the master of men" followed the 
counsel of old sages, listening politely to every advice 
offered to him and deciding as seemed to him best: 



Listen to every counsel, 

And the best of them choose, 

And make the counsel of thy heart to stand; 

For there is none more faithful unto thee than it. 

For a man's soul is sometimes wont to bring him tidings 

More than seven watchmen that sit on high on a watchtower. 



But he had little patience with dogmatism of the kind 
just cited, and his answer was: "That may be, sir, for I 
have studied this question by night and by day, for weeks 
and for months, but if it is, as you say, a message from 
your Divine Master, is it not odd that the only channel 
He could send it by was that roundabout route by that 
awfully wicked city of Chicago?" This is the version 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



27 



given by Schuyler Colfax in his "Reminiscences" of Lin- 
coln, but there is also another version of it, which seems 
more authoritative, in which the uncharitable remark 
about the metropolis of the West is omitted. It reads: 
"I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if 
it is probable that God would reveal His will to others 
on a point so connected with my duty, it might be sup- 
posed He would reveal it directly to me. . . . What- 
ever shall appear to be God's will, I will do." The fact is 
Lincoln recognized no other medium for this divine revel- 
ation than "the will of the people, constitutionally ex- 
pressed, which is the ultimate law for all." This is indeed 
the "mystery of democracy, or sentiment of the equality 
before God of all His creatures," which assumes that 
all the world's people are prophets, and perceives in the 
Constitution of the United States the best guarantee 
against false prophets. 

As far as Lincoln himself is concerned, all the false 
prophets have disappeared, for indeed there were false 
prophets both among the Republicans and the Democrats 
who predicted most dire consequences from Lincoln's 
election. In a letter to General J. M. Schofield, who 
had to contend so much with the various factions 
within the Republican Party itself, Lincoln wrote, "If 
both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will prob- 
ably be about right. Beware of being assailed by one and 
praised by the other." Lincoln passed through both 



The 

Mystery 

of 

Democracy 



Above 

all 

Factions 



28 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



A 

Prototype 
of Rising 
Humanity 



stages, having been first assailed by all parties, and now 
praised by all, even by many eminent Southerners who 
do not fail to recognize his greatness. And thus he is 
doubly right. 

The half century that has wellnigh elapsed since his 
death has dispelled the mists that encompassed him 
on earth. Men now not only recognize the right 
which he championed, but behold in him the stand- 
ard of righteousness, of liberty, of conciliation and 
truth. In him, as it were personified, stands the 
Union, all that is best and noblest and enduring in its 
principles, in which he devoutly believed and served 
mightily to save. When to-day, the world celebrates the 
century of his existence, he has become the ideal of both 
North and South, of a common country, composed not 
only of the factions that once confronted each other in 
war's dreadful array, but of the myriad thousands that 
have since found in the American nation the hope of the 
future and the refuge from age-entrenched wrong and 
absolutism. To them Lincoln, his life, his history, his 
character, his entire personality, with all its wondrous 
charm and grace, its sobriety, patience, self-abnegation 
and sweetness, has come to be the very prototype of a 
rising humanity. 

A certain Jewish saint who had the misfortune to sur- 
vive the death of his greatest disciple, is recorded to have 
exclaimed: "O Lord, thou shouldst be grateful to me 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 29 

that I have trained for you so noble a soul." This is 
somewhat too bold, but we may well be grateful to God 
for having given us such a great soul as Lincoln, "who, 
under God, gave this nation a new birth of freedom," and 
to our dear country, which by its institutions and its peo- 
ple rendered possible the greatness for which Abraham 
Lincoln shall stand forever. 



B S '12 



